The 21st century is an era of knowledge in which knowledge and creative ideas dominate the economy and in the economy of knowledge, trade is no longer limited to only tangible commodities. Specifically for high-tech enterprises, possessions of intangible assets such as knowledge and intellectual property rights including technology and patents that can bring even greater commercial profits have gradually exceeded the values of conventional tangible assets. In other words, besides profits gained from and based on tangible assets such as manpower, manufacturing factories and equipment, specific knowledge or intangible assets may even contribute greater profits to a company. As such, technology transaction and investments in such assets and even leveraged buyout of intangible assets become acceptable by enterprise managers and investors.
In transaction of intangible assets, economic behaviors such as production, transaction and consumption of intangible assets vary from assets of finished products in general that have tangible shapes and certain pricing basis for sales. On the contrary, intangible assets such as a specific technology or a patent, the core of transaction relies on the transfer of knowledge, wisdom and skills rather than calculating one by one the cost of each component item for a product. Therefore, it is difficult to set a pricing basis on such intangible assets which often requires specialists/experts of related fields to conduct technology valuation which are also difficult to find, thereby inadvertently limiting the transaction of intangible assets as a result.
Moreover, unlike general products, intangible assets do not have a fixed and stable market or sales channels, and especially lack an effective means to supply useful information on a regular basis which is crucial to enable technology demanders and suppliers of such assets to conduct transaction with one another accordingly. As such, in view of the potential value of patented technologies, the concept of technology commerce is being promoted globally to facilitate transaction of patented technologies to help upgrading the industry and enhancing competition capability as a result. However, the concept of technology commerce still lacks an effective mode of operation for implementation.